The Role of Sri Lanka in Enhancing Connectivity between South Asia and Southeast Asia

Dushni Weerakoon and Nipuni Perera
Additional contact information
Dushni Weerakoon: Asian Development Bank Institute
Nipuni Perera: Asian Development Bank Institute

No 487, ADBI Working Papers from Asian Development Bank Institute

Abstract: Improving physical connectivity between South and Southeast Asia has long been recognized as a key element in promoting greater trade and investment linkages within the region. As an island economy, Sri Lanka's regional connectivity has been mainly through its main sea port in Colombo, a transshipment hub port for South Asia. Investments to expand capacity at Colombo port are underway as part of Sri Lanka's renewed efforts to develop its infrastructure following the long internal separatist conflict that ended in 2009. Despite significant improvements in physical infrastructure connectivity, Sri Lanka has made only limited headway in strengthening its trade and investment links with the rest of the region. Moreover, the country has seen a sharp decline in its overall exports-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio, which is worrying in view of the growing external debt financing of many large infrastructure projects through state-led investment initiatives. Thus, Sri Lanka needs to focus on two priority areas: engaging private investment in infrastructure by strengthening the country's institutional and regulatory environment; and implementing a more strategic trade policy geared to enhance regional integration efforts.

Keywords: connecting south asia and southeast; sri lankan economy; infrastructure; energy trade; regional trade flows; trade and transport administration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2014-07-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ppm, nep-sea and nep-tre
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.adbi.org/files/2014.06.30.wp487.sri.lanka.role.connectivity.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://www.adbi.org/files/2014.06.30.wp487.sri.lanka.role.connectivity.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.adbi.org/files/2014.06.30.wp487.sri.lanka.role.connectivity.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.adb.org/adbi/files/2014.06.30.wp487.sri.lanka.role.connectivity.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0487

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ADBI Working Papers from Asian Development Bank Institute Kasumigaseki Building 8F, 3-2-5, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6008, Japan. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ADB Institute ().